Thicker Than McKay
by tielan
Summary: For a scientist, he's not all that good at counting.


**AUTHOR'S NOTES**: for the 'Blood' challenge on the LJ community 'sgaflashfic'.

**Thicker Than McKay**

It wasn't one of the better days since he'd come to Atlantis.

The woman in front of him in the breakfast queue didn't move up to the counter when the next person moved on, but remained talking to her companion. Considering that Rodney had a long list of things to do today, he thought this kind of behaviour unacceptable.

"You know, not all of us have time to stand around and gossip all day, Sergeant," Rodney said loudly. "Some of us have important work to get through some time in the next, oh, sixteen hours. So I'd appreciate it if you moved on, collected your meal, and finished your conversation _at_ your table."

It might not have been the most thoughtful of things to say but, as a general rule, Rodney didn't do thoughtful.

He received a glare fit to punch through solid trinium, not only from the woman but also from her companion. She began to move, then changed her mind and turned back. "You know, McKay, you're so much of an ass, it's no wonder your ego masquerades as your brain. There certainly can't be any room for much else in there!"

And without a further word she stalked out of the mess hall, followed by her friend.

Rodney smiled weakly at the people who'd paused in their eating to watch the momentary spectacle. Then he moved up and collected his MRE from the duty Sergeant. "Guess she got out of the wrong side of the bed this morning."

The man gave him a dry smile but said nothing.

Bad start to the day, things could only get better, right?

Wrong.

When he got to his lab, he discovered the assistant who usually set up his workstation for him was late. Rodney had to turn on his computer, open up his programs, and access the server network himself!

Not that he couldn't do it, of course, just that she usually did.

"What's wrong with her anyway?"

Across the room, Dr. Hodge muttered something that sounded distinctly uncomplimentary.

Rodney regarded her with a frown. "What?"

"I _said_ she's probably suffering from a bad case of superior asshole," the woman returned without looking up from her work.

Rodney blinked. "I'm sorry," he said, more than a little insulted, "did you just call me a superior asshole?"

She spared him a searing glance. "If the shoe fits."

"Excuse me, the shoe does _not_ fit, and you're being very rude this morning, Lillian."

"Better just this morning than every morning, McKay," Dr. Hodge returned acidly. The woman had no respect or consideration for genius.

"Are you suggesting that I'm rude every morning?" He wasn't! "That is the most preposterous... I can be very cheerful in the morning!"

"Cheerful," she sneered. "And that does Huei exactly _how_ much good when she sets up your workstation each day and you tell her off because she hasn't done it exactly the way you would?"

"I'm giving her the chance to improve herself," Rodney protested.

For some reason, he was getting the odd feeling that she was ganging up on him - in spite of the fact that it was presently just the two of them in the lab at this moment.

Lillian rolled her eyes. "Sure you are, McKay. You're basically telling her to read your mind every day, and when she doesn't, you don't even give her so much as a word of thanks. Nobody else would have put up with it. And now you wonder why she's not in _this_ morning?" She shook her head and went back to her work while Rodney stared.

"I'm just used to my routine," he said, disconcerted by her vehemence. Dr. Hodge presently looked as though she were more than willing to tear him a new one if he so much as said one thing with which she didn't agree.

She made a snorting noise and didn't say a word more.

Scary woman.

Just after lunch, he went for a stroll up to Dr. Weir's office, taking along with him the latest results of some tinkering they'd done with one of the Ancients' devices. Elizabeth was usually willing to listen to his theories and thoughts on such things - and he liked explaining his solutions to her. Sometimes she bounced ideas back to him in new and unusual forms, and he could use that.

Not today.

"Not now, Rodney," was what she said the instant he poked his head around her doorway.

"But I was just going to--"

She looked up and her expression was contrite. "I'm sorry, but if it's not urgent, then I can't see it now."

He glanced at her screen. "You're not doing anything more than reading through the last mission reports from Bates' team," he protested. "I have much more interesting things than that!"

Her mouth twitched a little. "But I have to look at these _now_," she said, with a hint of weariness.

"It will only take a minute," he said.

Her expression indicated she doubted it. "I'll come by and see you later, Rodney."

"Later?

"Later." She was very definite about it and he pursed his mouth.

"Okay."

But as he turned around to leave the room, though, he was pretty sure he heard her sigh.

He almost turned back. Elizabeth wasn't _that_ put-upon by dropping by to see him later, was she? After all, she came by to see him on many occasions, usually to see how he and his team were progressing with their work. What was so bad about coming to see him today?

Rodney left the control room feeling more than a little put out, and with the nagging feeling that he was missing something.

The mood in his lab had been oppressive all morning. The other scientists who came in to work with him or Dr. Hodge had seemed...subdued. And Dr. Hodge had been grumpy for the rest of the morning, although that wasn't necessarily anything unusual. Lillian could be distinctly unreasonable at times.

Even Huei had been shorter than usual when she came in. The young woman had come very close to snapping at him. At him! Dr. Rodney McKay, foremost scientist in Atlantis.

Unbelievable.

Although, now he came to think of it, the base did seem more subdued than normal. He passed a couple of soldiers who usually hailed him loudly and rambunctiously, and only got a brief wave. The civilian personnel he met along the way nodded at him or greeted him by name, but most were in a careful, cautious mood.

It was very strange.

He found his teammates in the mess hall, discussing football over cups of something. At least, Sheppard and Ford were discussing football; Teyla was listening to them argue, leaning her head on one hand and half-smiling at their enthusiasm and eagerness for the topic.

"...never understood how he managed to dodge those four linebackers to score the touchdown."

"Nothing but pure skill," Sheppard said, grinning. "McKay."

Rodney took a seat opposite Ford. "Has anyone else noticed that people are acting all weird today?"

His question didn't produce quite the reaction he'd hoped for. Ford leaned back in his chair with a half-grin, and Sheppard barely blinked. Teyla's smile deepened for a moment, but there was none of the instant reaction he'd expected upon his pronouncement.

"Good to see you, too, McKay," Ford said.

"All weird?" Sheppard asked, shifting a little.

"They're acting weirdly," he repeated. "And nobody seems to notice."

"Do you think 'weirdly' is a scientific term?" Sheppard asked the room at large. Rodney glared at him. Luckily the mess hall was mostly empty, and the people sitting around seemed to be working rather than actually listening to the conversation at this table.

Teyla's lips quirked as she sat up and leaned back, languidly. "I do not believe I have heard Dr. McKay speak of it before."

"So...that means it's not scientific?"

"Oh, very funny," Rodney snapped. "I'm telling you, people have been acting strangely all day."

"McKay, we're on a floating city, built by a people we call 'the Ancients', in a galaxy far, far away--""

"At least it's not 'long, long ago' in that galaxy far away," he muttered, thinking of the time machine the elderly Elizabeth had described when they woke her up from her ten-thousand year sleep.

"--without any hope of going home, fighting an alien race that wants to suck the life energy from us the way we'd drink a Slurpee, and you're suddenly worried that people have been acting strangely all day?"

Well, when put like that...no. "I'm not _suddenly_ worried," Rodney defended. "This has been happening since early this morning.

Across from him, Ford lifted an eyebrow in query. "Is this about your 'altercation' with Sergeant Bond at breakfast?"

"No," Rodney immediately denied. "Well, yes. Sort of. That was when I first noticed it. Then one of the assistants in my lab snapped at me, and one of _her_ colleagues was in a bad mood, and Dr. Weir isn't seeing anyone right now..."

"And she always has time for you?" Sheppard asked, dryly.

Rodney eyed him with irritation. "That's not the point. The point is that people around here are acting...off."

"Off?" Ford repeated.

"That's what I said."

"Is it not possible that people on the base are simply not in a good mood?" Teyla asked. The heavy-lidded eyes regarded him with wry amusement.

"All of them at once?" Rodney shook his head. "Something's up. I know it."

The other three exchanged a look, and Teyla exhaled deeply as she stood - not quite a sigh, but close. "I have promised Dr. Allen an explanation of my people's health habits this afternoon. I shall leave you to discuss this 'weirdness' that pervades the base."

"Are you up for some staves later on?" Sheppard asked as she began to move away from the table.

Teyla paused. "I do not believe today is a good day, Major Sheppard. Perhaps tomorrow?"

"Tomorrow's fine," he said.

Rodney watched Teyla move slowly and a little stiffly out of the room. Odd. She was usually quite a graceful woman, moving with an easy confidence, but there was a careful tension about her movements today; like someone compensating for a strained muscle, minimising painful movement.

"Has Teyla injured herself?" He asked Sheppard when he was fairly sure she was out of earshot.

"Teyla?" Sheppard looked at him, surprised.

"I only mention it because she seems a little...uncomfortable. Like she hurt something."

Sheppard glanced at Ford who shrugged. "I guess you could say that Teyla is in pain," he said.

If Sheppard had been trying to convince him that there was nothing weird going on, he wasn't doing a good job of it. Teyla's capabilities in combat didn't stop the Major from being a little protective around her at times - sometimes to her very great annoyance.

And Rodney hadn't thought he was _that_ far out of the grapevine that something had happened to his team-mate and he hadn't realised.

"So, when did she hurt herself?"

The other men exchanged glances again. Amused ones.

"For a scientist, he's not all that good at counting, is he?" Ford commented, smiling.

"What? Wait, when did this become a time for gratuitous panning of scientists?"

"When you proved exactly how bad you are at basic math," Sheppard said, not without a hint of amusement.

"Oh, now that's just-- I'm good at counting!" He was a member of Mensa! That meant he was good at a _lot_ of things - as well as counting!

Sheppard shook his head as he stirred his spoon around in the remnants of whatever was in his mug. "Hate to break it to you, McKay, but you can't count."

"And what proof do you use to come to this conclusion?" He struggled to maintain his dignity, to get Sheppard to do more than cast aspersions on McKay's abilities without any solid evidence.

"The fact that you haven't got a clue what's going on, Rodney," Sheppard said, unsympathetically.

He looked to Ford, hoping that the young man might provide even a hint of Sheppard's allusion. Ford caught the look and shook his head. "If you can't get it yourself, McKay, I'm not going to tell you."

"I can get it myself," he protested. "I just need a little help."

"Well, don't look at me for it," the young man said. "You laughed when you found out I was no good at probability."

Damn. He'd had this feeling he was going to get in trouble for that. Granted, Radek had been the one to find it extremely funny that the Lieutenant could be so incredibly unlucky, even with his guesses. "That was regarding statistical anomalies! And it was ages ago." Well, a couple of weeks at least.

"And that makes all the difference?"

"McKay," Sheppard sat forward, leaning his elbows on the table. "I think I'm going to side with Ford on this one. If you can't get it yourself, I'm not going to tell you."

And not a word more could he get out of either of them.

By the time he got to Carson Beckett in the infirmary, Rodney was more than a little irritated. His team-mates had continued talking about football as though nothing was wrong. Which only served to convince him that something really _was_.

Which was why he went to see Beckett in his office the instant he left the mess hall.

"Beckett, something strange is going on here."

Here, at least, there were no jokes about what defined strange. Carson looked up from his work with a wary glance. "What do you mean?"

At last a serious interest!

"People have been snapping at me all day," Rodney said. "First, there was this sergeant in the morning, then one of my lab assistants gave me a piece of her mind, Dr. Weir is in an odd mood, and Teyla's apparently injured herself, but Sheppard isn't worried about it..." He saw the change come over the doctor even as he spoke. "Oh, not you, too."

"Not me what?"

"You've got this...this look in your eyes. Like you're about to dismiss what I say."

"Actually, I was about to say that maybe they're snapping at you because of your charming personality," Carson said, dripping sarcasm.

"Oh, ha-ha, very funny," Rodney retorted. "Look, I know I'm not the easiest person to get along with, but everyone's in an odd mood today. Even the marines are subdued - and God knows, they're usually backslapping each other from dawn to dusk. Is there something the matter? Have you noticed it?" He saw the look Beckett gave him, and huffed. "I wouldn't be asking if it wasn't something I wanted to know, Carson."

Beckett straightened up and planted his hands on the table. "How long have we been here, Rodney?"

"As in Atlantis?"

"As in Atlantis."

"Six months." He did some quick mental maths. The cycle of the seasons turned differently on this planet compared with Earth, but he'd done an equation to work out the differential a month ago. He could count! "Maybe a little bit over."

Carson spoke clearly and patiently. "And during these last six months, have you ever noticed anything about the behaviour of the women in Atlantis? Say, once a month?"

Once a month? No, he hadn't noticed anything about the behaviour of the women in Atlantis once a...

Oh.

_Oh_.

He stared at the medic and thought back through his day. "You mean they're _all_--?"

Carson sighed. "Rodney, women living in close quarters with each other start to match menstrual cycles after a while."

This sounded like one of those things that Rodney was better off not knowing. Too much information and quite unnecessary. "Do I really need to hear this?"

"You said you wanted to know," Carson said without a trace of leniency. "They've done studies on it. More often than not, women who live together end up with matching menstrual patterns."

"And now it's happening in Atlantis?"

Carson nodded. "Currently, we have seventy or eighty women in this city. Given the way everyone tenses up once a month, I'd say a large proportion of them are cycling at the same time. That means seventy or eighty women who are all going through approximately the same mood swings at the same time. They've got everything from abdominal cramps - which, I'm told, are no picnic - to full-blown migraines."

"Oh."

It had been a long time since Rodney had lived with a woman. Okay, so he'd never _lived_ with a woman, even during his university days. He wasn't completely unconscious of things like this, of course, but he didn't pay any attention to it. It didn't have anything to do with him!

"Yes," Carson said. "_'Oh_.' And, on top of the fact that we have a third of the personnel undergoing the same mood swings at the same time of the month, we're also running out of medication for this...this complaint quite quickly - all the more since the Gennii took most of our medical supplies when they tried to take over Atlantis." The doctor eased back on his stool. "So, yes, in a way, there's something going on here in Atlantis. I can tell you, it's going to keep going on, too."

"Aren't there...herbal remedies for this kind of thing?"

"We've thought of that. Dr. Tolarenz has been speaking with the Athosians, trying to determine if they have any remedies they use for their people. Teyla has been helpful there, but many of the herbs they used on the planet where we originally found them aren't available to them now, and they haven't had time to determine replacements for them."

"So, Teyla..." He paused and remembered her hesitant walk from the mess hall. "Yes."

"Yes." Carson agreed. "Did you happen to irritate her today as well?"

Rodney glared at him, annoyed.

"You're still standing upright," Carson noted. "So I guess not. Congratulations. I'm quite impressed that you've managed to keep from annoying at least one woman around here. That's quite an achievement - for you."

"Oh, thank you so very much," he said, irked. "Look, I may not be the most...sensitive man around here..."

"Actually, you might be up for the least sensitive," Beckett said. He was clearly enjoying himself. "Most of the men had the idea by the third month of living with cranky female work mates. A few took a little longer."

"Well, how was I supposed to know...?"

"Perhaps some basic observation," Carson sniffed. "Like the rest of us. Or maybe just a little sensitivity to people around you."

"I'm sensitive!" He caught the look the other man gave him. "Sometimes. So it's not anything I should worry about?"

It was the wrong thing to say. Carson rolled his eyes. "Rodney, I'd highly recommend you invest in chocolate."

"There's no chocolate to be had on Atlantis." Not openly, anyway.

"Then work out a way to create some."

"I'm a scientist, Carson, not some kind of...of gourmand!"

"Well, the only other suggestion I have is that you start developing a nicer personality," Carson said.

"I have a nice personality!" At the skeptical look Carson gave him, Rodney defended himself. "I can be nice when I want to be!"

The other man put down his pen and regarded him without any sympathy. "Then you might want to be nice a little more often - at least once a month."

When Carson didn't look like he was going to say any more, Rodney huffed in annoyance and left the infirmary rather more thoughtfully than he'd arrived.

Not much of a choice at all.

No, this definitely _wasn't_ one of his better days in Atlantis.

**- fin** -


End file.
